Messages - Bob Loblaw Esq.

Best of luck man. I am just on the start of my legal training, so I cant tell you what its like once you've passed the bar, but you may want to consider private practice. Also, I can give you some experience. Join the National Guard or Reserve they will pay off a lot of your college debt if you enlist into a JAG unit as an officer. They will pay off even more if you sign up as an E-4 Specialist too. It would look good on a resume and remove a lot of that debt and help to defer the rest of it while in service. They may have changed the rules for new recruits in the last few years a bit but I am a military NCO so I tend to think that way. Its an idea to consider.

i summered at two midlaw firms, both actively recruited 3Ls, even this year.

i agree with all the above posts. min billables for bonus 1800, but most associates dont hit it and there are not any repercussions. at the midlaw firm ill be at, there are about 50-60 attys total, 7 or 8 associates, the rest partners - def not biglaw. Every assoc becomes a partner after 6-7 yrs. Pay is not big city market, but it is the highest within its particular secondary market.

i think job security is important too - like any job today its not 100% secure, but at least you know that your midlaw firm isnt overextending itself by bringing in a ton of SAs with the risk of no-offers/rescinding etc...

I got a 4.0 first semester (top student, no A-) from a 40-50 t1.and my question is am I a fool if I take a non-paying job this summer or should I be using these grades to my advantage, work my connections and try to get biglaw or at least a small to mid SA gig. Or is it too hard with the economy now. Thanks for the advice!

Have you considered transferring? If you can pull the same feat off second semester, you can likely transfer to a T20. It's just something to consider..

t20? if you're pulling a 4.0 after this semester too you should be applying to HYS.

Regarding the high hourly fees, remember, our service is intended for occasional use only, when lawyers are willing to pay extra for quick help they can trust.

If a lawyer is looking to pay extra for quick help he can trust, he will hire an atty/staff member who is qualified to do the work quickly in a trustworthy manner, not pay extra for a law student who takes significantly longer and must be babysat.

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When submitting projects, lawyers provide a description of the project and a limit, in hours, of how long the project should take. Being lawyers, our clients are in a good position to accurately estimate the time a law student should take for a given project. But if our students think a given limit is unreasonable, they are able to leave feedback on the project, and the client may raise the limit, or withdraw the project altogether -- but if a student thinks they can do it within the initial limit, they pick up the project on the spot. This is the "first come, first serve" system I alluded to. It is a free market competition. If the student is unable to get it done satisfactorily within the time allotted, they have to finish the project to the client's satisfaction without getting paid for the additional hours -- if they want to remain our associate. The client can also willingly add hours to the project if he wants to expand its scope, in which case, the student gets paid for the additional hours.

lol. every lawyer knows that it will take a law student longer; accordingly, no lawyer who want fast and reliable service will have any incentive to use this service. There's your free market. also, no law student, aside from the suckers who sign up, will stick around and agree to finish a project to the client's satisfaction without getting paid. are you serious?

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-You directly supervise all the work-product of our students. -You have direct access to them when they are working on your project.

the write up was just an example of legal outsourcing and how it may be done ethically.

i dont think the write up, or model rules for that matter, applies to OP at all because he is not a lawyer. A state's adoption of the rules are only binding on lawyers. The lawyers in which OP consults with might have concerns with sharing legal fees/unauthorized practice etc... which may ultimately determine whether they work with OP. Someone else can respond to this, its been a while since PR.

We are not lawyers. Our firm is called Insourcelegal LLC. Our website is launching in 90 days.

We charge the clients $50-$60 an hour. We are the ones paying the students.

We run the website, write the project management software, market and advertise, screen students, and manage any client-student problems. The students just log in, do projects, and get a check in the mail.

Best,

Will

Will, have you run this business idea by a real lawyer?

Because what you’re doing, sharing in legal fees as non lawyers, could be a violation of the ABA model rules of professional responsibility. I would seriously spend some $ talking with lawyer about this before you start your company and endanger it, and any law students working for you chances at being admitted to practice for ethics violations. Get a lawyer and have them explain explain the implications of rule 5.4 on your business plan. http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mrpc/rule_5_4.html

For example, if I got a criminal case in Missouri I may have to 1) familiarize myself with the facts of the case, 2) familiarize myself with Missouri sources, 3) probably pull up a Missouri treatise for an overview, 4) look up the annotated statutes, 5) review recent cases interpreting the statutes, and 6) run a few searches looking for cases with similar fact patterns and issues. THEN you write it up. Honestly, I feel bad for the poor schmuck in Missouri whose lawyer did him the grave disservice of outsourcing the work to a law student who couldn't use Lexis or Westlaw. Any research project of this kind, even for small matters, would require the use of Lexis or Westlaw.

Not only that, even in the most ideal situation (if you had all of the legitimate resources at your disposal), you're still going to have to stick your client with an absurdly inflated bill because it took your 167 lsat law student 10 hrs to do a job that a seasoned criminal atty could do in 2. A traditional student intern at a firm likely has the majority of his billable hours written off by senior attys who know they can only bill the client for a fraction of the time. Hell, this happens with newbie associate attys.

look dude, if this isnt a flame, at least recognize that you have a boatload of issues to consider. if this is a flame, please don't tell me, I'm wicked bored.